Film Roll 4 – Mamiya RB67- Fuji Reala ISO 100

As a rule when it's 114 degrees outside you are probably not going to be bugged by authorities or pesky neighbors when you're exploring. It was a hot day which I spent most of the time drinking water and driving with my windows down. It took me awhile longer to find the locations than it has in the past since I assumed I could find it on my own as I normally do. I arrived to the photo party late but I made up for the time lost.

^Above is actually all dead fish... and as you could imagine when it's 114 degrees the smell is quite strong.

Buildings that I have been in before were listed to be torn down. I doubt they will be there next time I visit. Sad that they have money to demolish but not enough to fix the sea (sarcasm, oh politics).

Film Roll 3 – Mamiya RB67 - Kodak Portra 160

I just want to point out that I was not shooting the way I should have with this roll... maybe I missed my digital camera or something but I was shooting far to freely and wasn't getting a good shot each time.

regardless as promised here are all the images from the roll.

Film Roll 2 - Mamiya RB67- Fuji PRO 400h

I am going to share a quick love story with you all before I start with the photos.

Recently I bought an Epson V600 scanner to do some of the work myself after the images are processed. With my handy scanner all set up I took a small trip to the Salton Sea to shoot a few rolls of film with scanning them when I return in mind. I was  very happy with the first roll that I had scanned but the cost is quite high ($10 per roll / $1 per image). I got the images processed including a couple rolls that I had yet to process and took them home.

I started to scan the images at different settings and spent a lot of time comparing the scans to the previous roll. After seeing the first scans I was not happy... the images were flat and colorless. The reason you shoot different films is for a specific look and color that it reproduces. The images that were scanned were absolutely dull and would be an embarrassment to post.

So here I was in this situation with a camera I love and the end product that I honestly hated. I felt sick to my stomach and I recently had an analogy for it that it was like falling in love and then finding out that she only had a couple months to live. I am still on this roller coaster of love where I was so high and now I am so uncertain with what I am going to do in the future.

I went and had 4 rolls scanned today after returning the scanner. I hope to continue shooting film but I feel that it will be awhile before I use it again.

This roll is from a film that I have not shot before. It's an ISO 400 film so it took me awhile to use it up. Overall I still prefer the Reala film over any of the ones I have shot so far.

The first 2 images here appear to have double exposed. I hope I have stopped doing this but because for each shot I have to crank 2 levers I sometimes forget and this causes the above double exposure.

The above image is my favorite of the roll. I really liked the lady smoking in the window. With digital I would point the camera and capture the image but with this camera its a bit more work. I have to manually expose and then capture the image. I guess listing 2 steps for each doesn't make it seem that much different but it is :) My only point is that at this point I tend to miss a lot of "moments".

Film Roll 1 - Mamiya RB67- Fuji Reala ISO 100

My goal here is to share with you my struggles and victories along with shooting film. I have shot maybe 3 rolls of film in my life but never with a full manual no assistance camera. I am going to post all 10 images I shoot on the roll meaning I am also going to waste your time with the uglies. I will try to explain with the best of my memory anything that stood out with each shot.

On the record I am beyond surprised on how well these images came out exposure wise. I expected all dark or all bright images, it turns out film is much more forgiving than polaroid.

These images for the record are straight from the lab with only resizing done to them. I want to share the whole experience with you here.

Image #1: What you don't see is me struggling trying to figure out which step I had skipped because the camera wouldn't fire.

Image #2: I was worried about shooting at 1/30th of a second with the big camera but seems to do just fine. I love the color of the wooden bench!

Image #3: I wanted to see how the light would reflect back or flare on film. The camera captured the image exactly how I saw it.

 Image #4: It appears that I got too excited to shoot this one so I shot one vertical and one landscape forgetting to advance the film... DOH!

 Image #5 and 6: I only remember taking one image of this but I think I accidentally placed the camera on a timer mode rather than an actual second value. In my defense I was rushed to take this photo.

Image #7: Seems like I nailed the exposure after practicing with the polaroid back. Up until this image all light data was guessed.

Image #8: A unique seat found in an alley near my house. This is the only image I took this day walking a few miles with the camera.

Image #9: If you look close enough you will see that I double exposed this image once again. The object on the left in the photo is a closeup of the armchair from the previous shot.

Image #10: This is a shot which I did not expect to come out. I took a polaroid of the same exact scene and it was way over exposed. I gave up mentally on this shot till I saw it today!